He had come to confide his troubles to her, and she kindly
lightened the task for him by asking why he had not gone to breakfast
with the Pelusinians.

"Because I am not fit for gay company today," was the reply.

"Again dissatisfied with Fate?"

"True, it has given me small cause for contentment of late."

"Put in place of Fate the far-seeing care of the gods, and you will
accept what befalls you less unkindly."

"Let us stick to us mortals, I entreat you."

"Very well, then. Your Demeter does not fully satisfy you."

A discontented shrug of the shoulders was the reply.

"Then work with twofold zeal upon the Arachne."

"Although one model I hoped to obtain forsook me, and my soul is
estranged from the other."

"Althea?" she asked eagerly, and he nodded assent.

Daphne clapped her hands joyfully, exclaiming so loudly that Chrysilla's
head sprang up with a jerk. "It could not help being so! O Hermon!
how anxious I have been! Now, I thought, when this horrible woman
represented the transformation into the spider with such repulsive
accuracy, Hermon will believe that this is the true, and therefore the
right, ideal; nay, I was deceived myself while gazing. But, eternal
gods! as soon as I imagined this Arachne in marble or chryselephantine
work, what a painful feeling overpowered me!"

"Of course!" he replied in an irritated tone. "The thirst for beauty, to
which you all succumb, would not have much satisfaction to expect from
this work."

"No, no, no!" Daphne interrupted in a louder tone than usual, and with
the earnest desire to convince him. "Precisely because I transported
myself into your tendency, your aspirations, I recognised the danger. O
Hermon! what produced so sinister an effect by the wavering light of
the lamps and torches, while the thunderstorm was rising--the strands of
hair, the outspread fingers, the bewildered, staring blue eyes--do
you not feel yourself how artificial, how unnatural it all was? This
transformation was only a clever trick of acting, nothing more. Before
a quiet spectator, in the pure, truthful light of Apollo, the foe of
all deception, what would this Arachne probably become? Even now--I have
already said so--when I imagine her executed in marble or in gold
and ivory! Beauty? Who would expect to find in the active, constantly
toiling weaver, the mortal daughter of an industrious dyer in purple,
the calm, refreshing charm of divine women? I at least am neither
foolish nor